


Flare

by twowritehands



Category: Jurassic World (2015)
Genre: After Movie, F/M, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-14
Updated: 2015-06-14
Packaged: 2018-04-04 10:06:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,670
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4133499
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twowritehands/pseuds/twowritehands
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Staying with Karen after the events of the movie, Owen and Claire have a much needed talk about their relationship.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Flare

Owen missed the sound of dinosaurs roaring in the distance, couldn’t really sleep without it. The best he had was the sound of trucks changing gears on the highway, but it wasn’t the same. The ringing silence only reminded him of what he’d lost to Indominus Rex. He wanted to turn on the TV or something, but he was living on the Mitchel’s couch so it wasn’t his TV to mess with. Fortunately, that was about to change. He’d finally found a place for himself and would be leaving tomorrow.

Claire’s family had been more than happy to take him in, since he saved their lives and all, but the last thing he wanted to do was outstay that kind of hospitality.

“You up?” a soft voice asked from the living room doorway.

He looked over the back of the couch and smiled at Claire in her green pajamas. “You can’t sleep either, huh?”

She slid onto the cushion at his feet, and he kicked the blanket over her knees. She smiled as she settled into the actually-pretty-awesomely-comfortable couch. His toes touched her thigh, she didn’t seem to mind.

“I went from managing over a thousand employees night and day to—living on a blow-up mattress in my little sister’s home office,” she said, eyebrows swooping elegantly up her forehead. “Being homeless and unemployed does not suit me.”

Owen allowed a little chuckle and admitted, “Meh, I’m pretty familiar with it.”

“Why doesn’t that surprise me?” she asked with a crook at the side of her mouth.

He nudged her with his toes. “I just mean I’ve changed my life tons of times. No different now. Starting tomorrow I’ll be a wildlife rehabilitator in Coos Bay.”

A breathy laugh parted her lips, showing him a flash of her white teeth. “Oh? So you’ll work with animals again?”

“Yeah. Animals are great. What about you?”

“Well, it’s not like there are tons of other theme parks willing to hire the lady who almost killed 20 thousand people.”

“You _saved_ 20 thousand people, Claire, come on,” he argued. Her bone-white face rippled with annoyance, and Owen felt laughter pushing at the back of his face, trying to crack a smile he kept in check. It was too easy and way too much fun to rile her up.

When their eyes met, his urge to smile turned into a different urge, one that seemed mirrored in her ice blue eyes. He looked at her soft pink lips and leaned.

“HELP!” a screech upstairs made both of them jump. She grabbed her heart, and Owen reached for a gun that wasn’t there. Bedroom doors opened, light fell down the staircase. Karen’s soothing voice could be heard in Gray’s room.

“I want Owen!” the boy cried.

Claire’s lips tilted upwards as she glanced at him. Owen had already stood with a silent sigh of resignation. After two weeks, he was used to being summoned upstairs, which was why he was sleeping in sweats. When it came to meeting the whole family in nothing but boxers, once was enough.

Claire followed him, because, again, these things somehow turned into family meetings.

Gray’s room was the first at the top of the stairs. Owen stepped into the room that had been recently stripped of the dinosaur merchandise. Gray was wrapped up in his blankets, wide-eye. His mother sat with him, gently combing his hair back from his sweaty forehead. His brother stood at the door with his arms crossed.

“Hey, kid, what’s the matter?” Owen asked.

“It was just another nightmare,” Karen said apologetically. “Sorry to wake you.”

“I doubt they were sleeping,” Zack said.

“Hey, now, I’m not kidding around,” Owen said, using his first warning tone. The teenager looked moderately frightened but then thrilled. He reminded Owen of Charlie in a lot of ways, happy in the middle of the pack, but entertained with testing the rules and Owen’s patience.

Owen glanced shyly at the woman he’d almost kissed seconds ago. The burgeoning romance between them was the hot topic in the house—sort of the only happy thing to dwell on in the whole situation—and they were reaching an apex. Owen had talked about it privately with literally everyone but Claire, and he suspected she had done the same. Which meant they had to hook up or shut up, and Zack knew it, was doing his upmost to make it happen before Owen left.

“Gray, sweetie, was it Indominus again?” Claire asked, always efficiently on task. Owen watched her in his peripherals, the way she stood there with her back iron-rod straight, her hands resting on her hips to show she meant business. It’d be believable if she wasn’t blushing.

The boy nodded. “What’s going to happen when Owen leaves?” he asked. “Will we ever see him again?”

His attention snapped back to the youngster. “I’m not going far, kid. We talked about this.”

“Yeah, but,” those big watery green eyes were a lot like Claire’s. “What if we need you? What if Aunt Claire needs you?”

“Okay,” Karen said, taking control again. “This isn’t something little boys should be worried about—“

“But she loves him!” Gray screeched. Like Echo, he only had one volume. “Don’t you see the way she looks at him?”

“Gray,” Karen scolded.

“It’s the same as the way he looks at her,” Zack offered from his sentry at the door. Then with a small lift in the corner of his mouth, he asked Owen, “What do you think is going to happen by just staring at her?”

Gray laughed a little. Owen closed his eyes and advanced to second warning tone, “Zack, I swear to God.”

Karen gave Claire a pointed look and Owen felt the silent communication between them before Claire cleared her throat,

“Owen, can we talk?” she asked. Still blushing, she slipped past Zack who gave Owen a clear bro-don’t-puss-out look that made him advance to his third warning stare down. Zack didn’t break easy and stared back evenly.

“This isn’t your business,” Owen said in final warning.

Stubborn will snapped in half. The teenager dropped his eyes to the floor and fell back against the door frame, nodding, muttering, “fine whatever, god.”

Smirking, Owen gave the guy a rewarding thump to the shoulder and winked at everyone in the room before going after Claire.

Claire wasn’t anywhere in the hallway or on the stairs. He checked the couch and found it empty before seeing a small light burning in the home office. She was sitting on the air-mattress like a mermaid, one shoulder strap of her top slipped off a shoulder. But she fixed that as soon as he clocked it.

“Look, this thing between us." she sounded nervous for a change, "What do you think it is?”

“It’s pretty simple.”

“Is it? We hated each other before the containment breech. If it weren’t for the near death experience…”

“But we did almost die, Claire, and things happened between us. Real things.”

“I’m waiting for it to flare out once I’m totally over the trauma.”

Owen huffed because that was a real blow, but he made out like it was no skin off his nose. “So it flares out. Big deal.”

“But I’m not looking for another fling, Owen. Near death experiences have a way of highlighting the really important things. And for me it was one or two things I hadn’t done yet.”

Oh. Owen looked down at his hands to make sure they weren’t shaking because it felt like they might be. She was talking big moves here. Major gear shifts in a life-long joy ride he’d been enjoying right up until….

Well, right up until the almost dying part. Yeah, it did highlight the wish-list, and yeah, being more than alpha lizard was on it. He had just never been forced to really look at it in terms of Make or Break.

It felt hot in this room and he gulped. She sat there in his peripherals, staring, waiting. Her face looked hard, her eyes nearly iced over like she was already shutting the gates before anything could rip her apart.

He grabbed her hand as if to stop her hitting the lock. “Hey.”

Relief stretched her lips into a smile, and again he sensed some nerves as she said, “So that’s the question: do you think it’s a flare out or something worth it?”

Owen scratched his nose and thought about it harder than he’d thought in a long time. Instinct said hunting was over. His vacation here with the Mitchel family had shown him that kids were just different kinds of lizards, which was the neatest discovery ever, and it tickled a breeding instinct.

But he’d also seen that divorce might as well be 1200 volts. Like raptors, kids never really trust after that. Which was what they were really talking about. He glanced at her and smiled.

“You really got it focused down to a laser point, don’t you?” he asked.

“I don’t appreciate anyone wasting my time.”

“Fair point,” he conceded. “I don’t appreciate being underestimated.”

She grinned cuter than anything. He laced their fingers. “I think we’re a lot alike.”

“Which could be another cause for concern,” she said.

“Or it could be just what’s been needed,” he argued. “Challenges are fun.”

Raw, unchecked emotions flickered in her face before she had control again. “Okay. We agree then. It’ll be a challenge. But…a worthy one?”

“Hell yeah,” he agreed. She laughed with joy and his heart raced at the sound of it. She leaned into him for a kiss.

“Slow,” he said quickly before their lips touched, using his soothing voice out of total habit. Meant to sooth raptors that wanted to tear his face off, but used right now to sooth himself because he felt all kinds of scary things. She was so beautiful and so very deadly.

She slowed but still kissed him. Her lips were soft and warm, her voice matching, “Slow.”

 


End file.
